Better and Cheaper Than IPTV

by xonery • 4 days ago

348 105 4 days ago

We're just throwing straight up piracy on HN now? We're vibing piracy now? Felonies via API?

inigyou9• 4 days ago

Yes. Unironically yes. Except that it's a misdemeanor. It's a felony for the author of this code and for dang if he doesn't remove this post (distributing piracy tools), but it's a misdemeanor for the ones watching the streams.

Razengan2• 3 days ago

FAAS

rideontime2• 4 days ago

Seems to be missing some context. What is this used for? Piracy?

pogue• 4 days ago

It's an alternative way to cast media to your TV by way of somehow ripping the streaming video off said website or service.

xonery7• 4 days ago

It's a CLI that lets you select a movie, finds a matching stream from streaming websites, transcodes it, burns in subtitles in real time, and tells your TV to play it.

2gremlin181• 4 days ago

Do I need to bring my own sources or is there a maintained list?

rideontime2• 3 days ago

What kind of streaming websites? Like, Netflix? Amazon Prime?

mikeweiss2• 4 days ago

I agree, is the use case any video stream other than big established ( which already support casting)... So... bootleg sports streams?

xonery7• 4 days ago

It casts whatever stream's on the page, same as VLC plays whatever file you open.

cortesoft• 4 days ago

I am not sure how this would help with piracy? It can only play a stream you already have access to, it doesn’t break encryption or anything.

PieUser• 4 days ago

The default config has a bunch of such sources: https://github.com/stupside/castor/blob/main/config.yaml

sources: - proxies: - "https://vidsrc-embed.ru" templates: movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}" episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}-{episode}"

  - proxies:
      - "https://1embed.cc"
      - "https://www.vidking.net"
    templates:
      movie: "/embed/movie/{itemID}"
      episode: "/embed/tv/{itemID}/{season}/{episode}"

  - proxies:
      - "https://www.rivestream.app"
    templates:
      movie: "/embed/torrent?type=movie&id={itemID}"
      episode: "/embed/torrent?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}"

  - proxies:
      - "https://www.rivestream.app"
    templates:
      movie: "/embed?type=movie&id={itemID}"
      episode: "/embed?type=tv&id={itemID}&season={season}&episode={episode}"

inigyou9• 4 days ago

You already have access to pirated streams. This app plays them for you. Check the source addresses in config.yaml.

krackers• 4 days ago

I thought the whole point of turnstile was that it detects headless browsers and it's supposed to be "difficult" to bypass. Apparently this just simulates clicking on the checkmark. Is it really that easy?

xonery7• 4 days ago

Yes, kindof…

KomoD• 4 days ago

was that it detects headless browsers
Apparently this just simulates clicking on the checkmark

Not just that. It also spoofs a bunch of browser stuff.

A standard headless browser will probably get flagged.

Saris• 4 days ago

If you can make the browser pass all the other checks going on in the background, clicking the checkmark is all that's left.

bob1029• 4 days ago

People have been automating WoW for a generation using things like peripherals duct taped to oscillating fans despite multi-million dollar budgets designed to defeat things far more sophisticated than this.

I would think of headless browser automation in exactly the same way you would about cheating in FPS video games. The red team always has the initiative and can win if they want to spend enough time and money.

jeroenhd• 4 days ago

With the right simulated events, a headless browser becomes indistinguishable from a real browser without platform detection. It's not hard to figure out that these headless browsers are running a software renderer on Linux. In time, they're just going to have to detect Linux users and force them to fill out one or multiple challenges if workarounds like these keep getting used.

The checkbox is just a small part of what the checks are doing. It's monitoring everything the browser is doing and how the browser is responding to certain events up until you tick the checkbox, at which point it determines if you need one of those "are you human" challenges or if you can pass without interruption, based on how bot-like you are.

inigyou9• 4 days ago

The point of Turnstile is to sell a warm fuzzy feeling of security to website owners, block Tor users who don't enable JavaScript, and convince website owners to give a copy of all their traffic to the NSA for free.

Actual security is barely relevant except to the extent that if it doesn't add any security, the NSA might get worried that people will stop using Cloudflare.

Fake security - number of blocked users, which Cloudflare calls "bots" regardless of whether they're people or bots - is used in Cloudflare marketing.

xonery7• 4 days ago

Docker version on MacOS might not find your TV.

monksy• 4 days ago

You probably have to expose it to do Upnp through the VM that is needed for docker on Macos.

j452• 4 days ago

This is interesting, instead of a command line interface it made me wonder what an interface right on the tv could look like.

Comparisons to watching tv, are usually a TV interface, with a TV device/app, be it an Android TV/Apple TV, etc.

Maybe I'm missing it, I couldn't see a tv interface.

The part where it can send video to any kind of tv is a pretty remarkable piece.

defrost• 4 days ago

It's also remarkably "old" in a digital sense:

  Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. Introduced 2004; 22 years ago.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA

  Google Cast is a proprietary protocol developed by Google for playing locally stored or Internet-streamed audiovisual content on a compatible consumer device. The protocol is used to initiate and control playback of content on digital media players, high-definition televisions, and home audio systems using a mobile device, personal computer, or smart speaker. The protocol was first launched on July 24, 2013; 12 years ago.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cast

j452• 4 days ago

Old also in this case keeps TVs useful longer

slg2• 4 days ago

Usually piracy software tries to maintain a little plausible deniability, but here this is suggesting it will help you stream this weekend's newly released $250m blockbuster.

devindotcom• 4 days ago

the interface shows the top movies right now on https://www.themoviedb.org/

some-guy• 4 days ago

I’m not against piracy but the initial pitch made it seem like it’s more purely for trying to cast streams embedded in websites that you already are visiting and/or have access to, of which do not “allow” you to cast, or for whatever reason only work on a laptop and not on something like AirPlay. But the LLM-slop description of “random websites” in addition to the option for a TVDB API key confuse me as to what the actual focus is here.

quantummagic• 4 days ago

It could just be streaming the trailer.

xonery7• 4 days ago

Main use case

inigyou9• 4 days ago

I suppose it searches your configured sources for that movie and comes back "not found"

Stremio does this. Stremio is a legal application that finds media from any configured plugin. You're supposed to add the illegal Torrentio plugin to automatically pirate media. By doing it this way, most development can take place in public.

A similar situation exists with the emulator Azahar and the illegal fork Azahar Plus which can automatically decrypt games.

Edit: lolno this project just has pirate sites built into it

ranger_danger• 4 days ago

Can you cast to a Roku device with this?

kls0e• 4 days ago

I tried with v1.4.1, TVs running Roku TV do not seem to be supported at this point of time, at least "castor scan" does not yield any results. Roku TV does support Apple AirPlay as an add-on as you probably know.

dtagames16• 4 days ago

For a no hacks alternative, I built TV Explorer. It puts the channel's published HLS stream into your browser with no interim steps. Uses the public GitHub list of more than 10,000 free channels.

https://tvexplorer.live

ssl-3• 4 days ago

That is an unbelievably slick thing that you've got there.

It feels very light-weight, it's approximately instantly-responsive. Back button works. I don't understand the stats (or my contribution to them), but whatever.

(the closed-captioning pop-up causes some overlay issues for me, though)

moar edit: Upon further review with my very not-special desktop box, I'm reasonably confident that this is the quickest, most-responsive "TV-watching" experience I've had since analog NTSC left the scene ~eons ago. It's fast like switching from channel 11 to channel 13 used to be with the very quickest and most well-behaved of tuners.

What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing?

mschuster91• 4 days ago

What aren't you doing that everyone else is doing?

Seems to be the fact that there's no advertising, tracking or other SDKs and the entire JS is contained in two files.

ninkendo2• 3 days ago

Back button works

Maybe a little too well... I tried a whole bunch of channels to get an idea of which ones work, and my history was too full to get out of the site. Maybe every channel change doesn't need to push to your history list.

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thank you so much! What a nice thing to hear.

The short version is that it uses my own engine, called Watson. I used to work for a small game studio inside a big company and my specialty was tooling. I had built my own before I started there and when they shutdown, it evolved into Watson[0].

It's lightweight because it's a static site with no server, it has no spying code or SDKs, and it puts the broadcasters HLS stream URL directly into a <video> element in your browser with minimal intervention.

[0] https://watsonengine.io

SoftTalker2• 3 days ago

Looks potentially very nice but the majority of the channels I tried were "blocked in my area or not broadcasting"

jusonchan81• 4 days ago

This is incredible! It loaded so fast on my mobile and I’m able to watch channels from all over. Amazing stuff man. It requires a thread of its own

severine• 4 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48325624

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thank you so much! Devs sometimes don't hear the good stuff about our work and I'm thrilled that you're enjoying it.

liamwire• 4 days ago

This is fantastic, as others have said. Could you talk a bit about how it's so wonderfully fast?

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thank you! That's so great to hear! I wrote a little bit about that here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48969373

nchagnet• 4 days ago

This is such a high quality TV viewing experience, I really love it! Amazing work!

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thank you very much. I'm delighted that you like it!

boromi• 4 days ago

very cool. How would have this on actual TV? Load it in the built in browser?

dtagames16• 3 days ago

You can cast from a Chrome browser to an Android TV or Chromecast device:

https://tvexplorer.live/help/ways-to-watch

and...

https://tvexplorer.live/help/25-things-07

liquidnitrogen1• 4 days ago

I think https://tv.garden/ has more channels than your especially if i look at Japan

asimpletune• 4 days ago

Both of these are amazing

maxweylandt• 4 days ago

Seems to depend on the country, tv.garden has nothing in Namibia, for example

drewrbaker• 4 days ago

This as a Jellyfin plugin would be awesome!

normie3000• 4 days ago

Just stays on the loading screen for me (Safari, iOS 26).

b112• 4 days ago

Same here. I wonder if it's hugged to death?

jarym• 4 days ago

Love it

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thank you, kindly!

supersparrow• 3 days ago

This is amazing! Can this be self hosted?

dtagames16• 3 days ago

It is a static site that doesn't require a server and can be hosted anywhere.

nickzelei• 3 days ago

This is probably the nicest IPTV site I’ve ever seen, nice work!!

dtagames16• 3 days ago

I'm so honored that you feel that way, and thank you for saying so!

sharts• 3 days ago

dis sum good stuff

dtagames16• 3 days ago

Thanks bro!

mcmoebius• 3 days ago

that's INCREDIBLE! thanks so much for creating and sharing this!

dtagames16• 3 days ago

The pleasure is mine, and thank you for saying so!

hperrin• 4 days ago

I built it because I couldn't cast web video from my laptop to my TV: no Chromecast, no AirPlay.

Looks like Claude built it.

yard2010• 4 days ago

You're absolutely right and let me be honest about the honest load-bearing smoking-gun you point at.

dimator• 4 days ago

That's the core tension — and you're right to call it out! Let me walk back my claims.

simondotau• 4 days ago

I'm pretty sure it was built by a compiler, using libraries provided by Google and others. Until Claude can directly output machine code packaged for distribution, it's just another middleman between the source of intent (the human) and the final deliverable.

</sarcasm, mostly>

xonery7• 3 days ago

Claude helped me out for sure, i'm not a DLNA or FFMPEG beast, but i solved a problem I had and that's what matters. If it solved a problem you have, even better.

haaz• 3 days ago

Yeah don't listen to HN dorks. Unless youve handwritten the code using Mayan virgin blood on papyrus scrolls they will complain.

sgt• 3 days ago

"Helped me build" usually means it was vibe coded AI slop.

vivzkestrel• 4 days ago

- very stupid comment: i still have no idea what this project does even after reading the README

- can someone kindly explain what is the actual problem statement and what the author is trying to solve here?

inigyou9• 4 days ago

You type in the ID of a movie and it pirates it for you

aussieguy1234• 4 days ago

Can this be used without a TV, lets say if I just want to play the streams with VLC?

dizhn• 4 days ago

I would hope it would do the "find and extract stream source" on the web page bit well. (This is quite hard on some sites). From there VLC can handle it.

I use "Web Video Caster" on Android to stream videos from websites to my TV. Free version is fine.

stef25• 4 days ago

Immediately worked for me on a simple Samsung bought 15+ years ago.

What's the best way to use it, write your own search to parse all the json pages https://vsembed.ru/movies/latest/page-1.json ?

m00dy3• 4 days ago

Castor launches headless Chrome with a randomized fingerprint and stealth scripts to hide automation.

you lost me in there.

m00dy3• 4 days ago

I work with browser fingerprinting, so I took a look at the repo to see what it actually does. From what I can tell, it only patches navigator, the Audio API, and the Canvas API. That is pretty basic, so it will likely get flagged easily.

inigyou9• 4 days ago

Depends what you're trying to bypass. Cloudflare isn't as strict as Google.

inigyou9• 4 days ago

This situation where bots have to run a headless browser in a new profile is just stupid. Can we have the old internet back? Please? Cloudflare you're not stopping bots, you're just wasting effort on both sides while siphoning access logs and passwords to the NSA.

paxys• 3 days ago

It's about as much effort as a torrent, so I don't see the point.

Better and Cheaper Than IPTV

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